Dishonest

A reader contacted me under a pseudonym a few months ago. She turned out to be a prominent Southern lawyer with a problem she hoped I’d write about. Her college-age daughter had always been a “girly girl” and intellectually precocious, but had struggled with anxiety and depression. She liked boys and had boyfriends in high school, but also faced social challenges and often found herself on the outs with cliques. The young woman went off to college—which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and “pronouns.” When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: “gender dysphoria.” Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone.

The lawyer lady is being dishonest. Friends and college have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. “My good kid fell in with bad company” is the eternal excuse of parents who want an easy way out. The girl is very clearly rejecting her mother. Instead of bugging journalists, mom should take a good, long look at her own relationship with her womanhood. That’s where the answer lies. The kid is trying to tell her something, and she’s refusing to hear.